Produced by our awesome design team manager, Erin Manning, and supercreative digital content producer, Gabe Ratliff, this artistic, fun, 3-minute video gives a sneak peek at how we produce the gorgeous photos you see every month in Delicious Living magazine and on deliciousliving.com.

“We’ve been talking about doing behind-the-scenes footages, especially for food photos, for a while now,” Erin told me. One reason is a common misconception that I take the photos that appear in the magazine during recipe testing. Let me assure you: I can cook, but I’m no photographer. We leave that to professional photographers and food stylists; in this case, Leigh Beisch and her team in San Francisco, shooting our October 2013 recipes and cover.(The video even includes a clever link to an exclusive recipe forRoasted Red Beet Hummus, which won't appear in print until Oct 2013.)

“We’ve been working with Leigh for a decade or more, and her vision to make food look beautiful without any crazy architecture is the same as ours,” Erin says. “Her and our look is real, it’s attainable. Her studio-house in San Francisco is itself a piece of art! So the space, Leigh as an artist, and her crew were all inspiring and great to work with.

“This was a no-pressure way for me to learn how to shoot video and to move from being a still photographer to incorporating something that’s more interesting and engaging for our audience on our new digital platform,” she says.

Beyond the visual artistry, I love the Halloween-ish soundtrack—it’s perfect in a Tim Burton kind of way. “The challenge is to tell a rich story in a short amount of time,” notes Erin. “Gabe [our digital content producer] is a DJ and a musician—he started in classical and toured with a rock band. His training and expertise in telling a story with music, timing, cadence, images, and any audio elements is the secret for how the video engages you subconsciously.”